Maximus II Formula Club

[Zedaine]

Greetings, just built my latest PC build last weekend and decided to go with this mobo. I found this forum and thread and decided I should join the club and post my info. You can see my specs in my profile. Secks pics will come later .

Right now I have a C2D E8500 3.16Ghz oced to 4.0Ghz 9x450. I would say it's fairly stable... but not 100%, hopefully someone can help me solve the issue unless I may have already solved it myself. I have run Prime95 over night with no errors, then ran both Prime95 and 3dMark06 for 8 hours with no issues... however, doing trivial tasks, such as browsing the internet, browsing folders, etc, the entire system locks up, screen still shows image, but can't move mouse, no sounds, can't do anything, which I need to solve by doing a force shutdown or restart. It usually runs fine for hours, the freeze can happen anytime. I have since upped my CPU Voltage from 1.29 to 1.3 and NB voltage from 1.24 to 1.25, I'll report later if the problems still occur. I have done a memtest with memtest86 overnight, passed 5 times with no errors. All my drivers are up to date, I haven't updated the BIOS (Running 1307 right now) since I have heard that currently that is the most reliable/stable bios.

Any information I don't supply means it is set to default or auto.

Ratio CMOS Setting: 9
FSB Frequency: 450
DRAM Frequency 1088 (5:6)
DRAM Timing 5-5-5-15
CPU Voltage: 1.30
CPU PLL Voltage: 1.5
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.16300
DRAM Voltage: 2.20
North Bridge Voltage: 1.25
South Bridge 1.5 Voltage: 1.5
South Bridge 1.1 Voltage: 1.12

Temps *C Idle/Load
CPU: 47* C / 60-65* C
Mobo: 35* C / 37* C
NB: 45* C/ 47* C
SB: 45-47* C/ 47-50* C

Any help on anymore tweaking is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Deton]

@ Zed,

Any information I don't supply means it is set to default or auto.

Ratio CMOS Setting: 9
FSB Frequency: 450
DRAM Frequency 1088 (5:6)
DRAM Timing 5-5-5-15
CPU Voltage: 1.30
CPU PLL Voltage: 1.5
FSB Termination Voltage: 1.16300 ---> try 1.25v or close to Vcore voltage reference
DRAM Voltage: 2.20
North Bridge Voltage: 1.25 --> up this a notch or two
South Bridge 1.5 Voltage: 1.5
South Bridge 1.1 Voltage: 1.12

Temps *C Idle/Load
CPU: 47* C / 60-65* C
Mobo: 35* C / 37* C
NB: 45* C/ 47* C
SB: 45-47* C/ 47-50* C

Any help on anymore tweaking is appreciated.

Thanks.

don't panic about your temps, they look normal for air cooler. If you have FSB termination voltage high then you don't really need high vcore, these two voltage almost go hand in hand. Keep the voltage close within range to each other if you can.

[Zedaine]

Thanks Deton,

I wasn't too worried about my temps to begin with, but I'll go ahead and play around with those voltages you mentioned and see how well it does... when I get home.

This may be a little off topic, but it's about the P182 case and it's cooling. I installed a front 120mm intake fan to begin with (blows at 110 CFM at 1900RPM max speed), and put all the fans to max speed (rear and top fan are output, cpu fan is blowing hot air to the top fan, I think the antec fans blow at 79 CFM max), the bottom chamber has another 120mm fan, but I don't think that really effects the rest of the case. The noise doesn't really bother me (the design of the p182 makes any fan pretty quiet) however... when I open the side of my case, the temps instantly drop 8* C, which is quite amazing to have a CPU at 57-60* C load when overclocked. This just tells me that the airflow in my case isn't as good as it could be. I don't mind looking at the very pretty motherboard inside every now and then, but it still would be nice to get a few degrees lower in temps if I can. Just wondering if you have any tips on improving airflow.

I've tried changing the rear and top fan speeds slower, doesn't do anything, and even opened the door and opened the front fan filter doors, I may have got a 1* drop from that.

[Deton]

Well, P182 is mid tower case, it has sound proof insulation on the side panels. I have the P180 model.
Here are two options you can do;

1. install another fan at HDD (mid video card area) this will help to push more air
2. since you have 9700 cooler facing to the back as exhaust, you can change the top exhaust fan as intake. This will have more intake air directly to the CPU
3. open up those PCI slot covers for more ventilation
4. do some modding to the side panel to install a side fan, perhaps put in a clear window like you wanted and a 140mm fan at least.

Note: the bigger fan the quiter you get, it will moves more air at slow speed.

The reason I mentioned about your temps earlier because sometimes heat can cause yoursystem crashes.

[Zedaine]

Well I got home to a locked up PC... so I upped the voltages, still the same result, but happened only minutes after the system booted. I've turned the bios settings back to default to try and isolate the problem, and it still freezes... however, I am suspicious that the PC Probe II Asus tool is causing it somehow, because it only seems to freeze when that is running. I'll update when I know more, I seriously hope I don't have a bad mobo/processor... yayyy for the trouble shooting process...

Update: So the freezing continued... Before I concluded that I had bad hardware I decided it was maybe time for a BIOS update...

So I am at BIOS 1702, and so far everything seems "normal"... I am going to run everything like this for a while.. maybe a few days, before I try to do any overclocking. I do love my temps at default specs though!

CPU is 33* C Idle and 48* C on Load

Seems strange how my pc would be running fine for a few days, then all of a sudden decide to start acting up.. hopefully this is fixed for good.

Thanks for the help, I'll report back soon if I got a freeze and have to RMA something...

New UPDATE!!!!:

uTorrent was the culprit.. I am guessing it had a conflict with something on my computer, maybe AVG? Oh well, I removed it for now, now that I think about it, my freezes did start happening when I got utorrent a few days ago.. and I started using it yesterday.. I'll keep testing though, but I am 99.9% sure that was the culprit.

And yet another Update:

I'm thinking uTorrent had a conflict with my wireless card drivers... wireless card drivers have been updated, but I don't think I'll be doing any torrenting on this machine... we'll leave it at that, so I will probably go back to overclocking this thing tomorrow. The Encore wireless card seemed to have some issues with Vista 64, hopefully these updated ones fare better.


Update (Problem):

My multiplier (Ratio CMOS Setting) wont seem to change from 9.5 when I change it in the Bios.. this is after I "upgraded" to Bios 1702, should I go back to 1307? or 1602?

[Deton]

Update (Problem):

My multiplier (Ratio CMOS Setting) wont seem to change from 9.5 when I change it in the Bios.. this is after I "upgraded" to Bios 1702, should I go back to 1307? or 1602?

what do you mean by this?
I think you have manually key in the multiplier #

[Zedaine]

what do you mean by this?
I think you have manually key in the multiplier #

In the bios when I try to change the multiplier or which is called Ratio CMOS setting to something like 8 or 9 and then change my FSB to 450... my clock rate is 4.27 not 3.6 if it were 8 or 4.0 if it were 9. I checked CPU-Z and my multiplier is still at 9.5 even though I changed it to something else in the bios.

[GhostRider]

This anygood fellas ??

[Deton]

@ Ghost,
Great you got your Q6600 up to 3.7ghz but it is stable?
what are your temps at load now?
Those two things that we do care about, if you can get it stable at 3.7Ghz and have its core load temps under 65c then we will and pat yourself on the back.

[GhostRider]

Yes its stable deton it only gets up to around 45-54 load gaming on CoDWaW sits @ 33-35 idle, i can drop the timings on the memory aswell to 5-5-5-15 and its still goes !! eeeee im all chuffed thanks deton .....

[Zedaine]

Yes its stable deton it only gets up to around 45-54 load gaming on CoDWaW sits @ 33-35 idle, i can drop the timings on the memory aswell to 5-5-5-15 and its still goes !! eeeee im all chuffed thanks deton .....

That's an amazing overclock, especially with those temperatures. What are your voltages at?

Good job and congrats!

[Zedaine]

I am back in business, thanks to the new 1802 bios released today, it fixed my multiplier problem and is supposed to make the system run a little quicker... we'll see.

Download Bios 1802: ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/mb/so...rmula-1802.zip

Anyways here is my system right now, temperatures look good... I just hope it stays stable.
Vista User Experience Rating gives me a 5.9 on everything, w00t! Like that really matters though... haha.

Core Speed: 4050 Mhz
Multiplier: x 9.0
Bus Speed: 450 Mhz
Rated FSB: 1800 Mhz
DRAM Frequency : 540 Mhz (5:6) 1081 Mhz
DRAM Timing: 5-5-5-15

Voltages:
Vcore: 1.28 V
DDR: 2.2 V
SB11: 1.11 V
SB15: 1.50 V
CPUPLL: 1.50 V
NB11: 1.28
DramVTT: 1.10 V
VTTCPU: 1.28

Temps (With the case off the Core Temp drops about 7* C):
CPU: PC Probe II: 42* C Idle / 61* C Load
CPU: Core Temp: 45-47* C Idle / 63-65* C Load
MB: 36* C
SB: 46* C Idle / 47* C Load
NB: 44* C Idle / 47* C Load
Power: 37* C Idle / 42* C Load

Pictures:




Update:

PC is still running strong, running Prime 95 in the background while play Warhammer Online, downloading and installing WoW..played Oblivion for a bit, everything is running very nicely. Temps still look good, I am very happy with this overclock, and with this new 1802 bios. I would highly recommend it!

Download Bios 1802: ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/asus/mb/so...rmula-1802.zip

Deton, if you wouldn't mind updating your first post and adding this link, that would be great! Thanks.

[GhostRider]

That's an amazing overclock, especially with those temperatures. What are your voltages at?

Good job and congrats!

I'll post them when i get the chance but most of them are on auto part from the cpu voltage which is at 1.475..

[sebna]

Does any body of you guys have P45 a3 ver? You can check it in CPU z - thanks

[Deton]

Deton, if you wouldn't mind updating your first post and adding this link, that would be great! Thanks.

Done!
Glad to see you've solved the problem

[GhostRider]

I'll post them when i get the chance but most of them are on auto part from the cpu voltage which is at 1.475..

Update the only change i made was the cpu voltahe everything set to auto ... and i made a mistake its @ 1.375 not 1.475